Underachievement
by bellagill92
Summary: When both Mira and Erza end up pregnant at the same time, Jellal ends up saddled with the brunt of his fiancée's competitiveness. Jerza Week Day 3: Family.


**A/N: This one-shot is supposed to, one day, become part of a multi-chapter fic I have been working on for ages. Honestly, I have no idea when it will be ready but this little snippet seemed appropriate enough for today's theme of Jerza week. Suffice to say, in this version of the future Jellal is free and Crime Sorciére has been forced by the council to merge with a legal guild – in this case, Fairy Tail. **

**This takes place about two years from the Manga's current timeline.**

"Are you sure this kind of test is accurate?"

"Yes."

"So, there's no doubt?"

"No."

There was a pause. "Are you really certain?"

Porlyusica glared and started reaching for her broomstick. "Girl, I am not beyond whooping a pregnant brat out of my house using this, so I suggest you walk out by yourself while you have a chance."

Eyeing the broomstick skeptically, Erza considered pointing out that any of her many, many swords, even the dullest ones, could chop the broomstick to pieces before she even had a chance to start swinging the cleaning utensil. She refrained herself, however, because she was not a fan of doctors and hospitals and were she to be too difficult, the Sky Dragon's Edolas counterpart might just refuse to deliver her child herself, leaving her stuck with said doctors and hospitals in the end. As such, she decided to take her leave quietly.

Still, that didn't stop her from fuming all the way back to Magnolia, arms crossed over her growing five-month-along bump. "I blame your father," she informed her child under her breath, just before – almost on cue – she saw a flash of light accompanied by a gush of air rushing just past her.

Suddenly, she frowned. Was that… Jellal using Meteor? She got her answer when she heard him yelping as he crashed into a tree a few yards back by the path.

"Jellal! What on Earthland are you doing?" she yelled as she rushed to her fiancé, spotting him sitting up on the floor, rubbing the shoulder that had taken the brunt of the crash. He'd put quite the dent on the tree too…

"I was heading to find you at Porlyusica's – I lost focus when I spotted you here," he mumbled. "What happened? Natsu told me you rushed to see Porlyusica all of a sudden. Is everything alright? Is the baby okay?"

Newly reminded of the reason why she'd been so annoyed just before, Erza's answer came initially in the form of a frown and a pelt against the back of his head, which had him yelping again. "Aside from the fact that it's got a slacker for a father, yes, everything is as it should be."

"What?" he asked, confused.

"You heard me!" she said, turning her back on him to pout some more. "Damn you, Jellal! Couldn't you have taken the extra mile this time?"

He struggled to get back on his feet, limping closer to her. "The extra…"

"Of all the things you could have under-achieved on… I mean, you didn't make it into the Magic Council at age nineteen by aiming low even if it was for evil deeds alone! Was it so hard for you to apply yourself a little on this too?!"

He kept looking at her in disbelief. "Erza, what are you on about? Apply myself on what?"

"Getting me pregnant!" she shouted, turning to glare at him. "Did you have to stop at one child?! Would it have killed you to get an extra kid or two in me?"

He stared. That was it. She had lost it. The hormones had fried her brain. But before he could do anything about it, Erza spoke again.

"She's having twins!" Erza informed him.

"Who?"

"Mirajane!" she shouted. "She is having twins and I am _not_! That means I'm losing! It is _unacceptable_!"

Oh, the look the demon had had on her face as she announced that to the world…

"_Turns out, there's a good reason why I'm so much bigger than you even though we're both five months along," _Mira had said, sweet delight mixed with demonic teasing (it was no secret pregnancy and the hormones it bought along had re-awakened their rivalry, even though it wasn't as violent as it had once been). "_I'm having _two _babies. Isn't it wonderful? Laxus sure doesn't do things by the half."_

The giggle that had accompanied the revelation might as well have been a '_suck it, bitch'_. As such, Erza had managed to utter a composed 'congratulations' before rushing to Porlyusica's because if Mirajane was having twins, she sure as hell had to be having triplets. Which, turned out, she wasn't.

Unacceptable.

"Losing?" Jellal asked in disbelief. "Erza, you and Mira are having babies, not competing against each other on some kind of twisted match."

She shook her head. "Your naïveté is heartwarming. Really, it is."

He sighed. "Erza…"

"She's already ahead on the number of babies and likely the due date, considering twins tend to come earlier than singletons. That means I have to catch up once our son is here and beat her twins at all other milestones."

"Wait. Our son?"

"Of course _our_ son – who else's? I need to start devising a training schedule immediately. I wonder how teaching an infant to roll over and crawl works. If he masters crawling by four months, maybe he will be able to walk by the time he's six months old. And talking is important as well – he needs to be able to express himself, doesn't he? Maybe Levy can point me in the direction of some books about infant coaching, considering she has read practically every tome in the library."

His lips curled, too thrilled about the developments to even worry about the alarming signs of Erza's impending overbearingness in what came to motherhood. "Erza, we're having a boy."

"The gender is irrelevant to this matter. A boy should be able to master all milestones just as early as a girl under the right regimen. Especially with exceptionally skilled parents like us. In fact, our natural strength gives him the advantage over Mira's brats – Mira and Laxus are both forces to be reckoned with now but I hear Laxus used to be quite frail as a child before he received that lacrima that made him a Dragon Sl…"

Jellal interrupted his fiancée's ranting with a kiss, much to the redhead's surprise.

When they broke apart, she raised her eyebrows at him. "Excuse me. I was talking."

He shook his head. "Erza, we're having a little boy."

"Yes, that's what I said."

"No, Erza. We're having a _boy_."

She kept looking at him like he'd completely lost it. Then, it hit her. "Oh, you didn't know that before, did you?"

He shook his head.

Her eyes widened. "Blast. I have handled this reveal poorly. I'm sorry, Jellal. Rest assured, it won't happen ag…"

He interrupted her with another kiss and, that one, he made last. She didn't protest, given that he was a very enjoyable kisser and actually did contribute a little herself… She had to stop it soon, however, before the kiss could send her hormones into overdrive and cause her to jump him right then and there in the middle of the forest where anybody could see them (it wouldn't be the first time).

"I take it that you're happy we're having a boy," she concluded when they broke apart.

He smiled. "About as happy as I would be if we were having a girl," he replied. "It's just that _knowing…_" His grin widened and he touched her belly. "It makes it feel less like something I'm only experiencing in dreams and more like reality." Still, he couldn't help feeling like it was more – so much more – than he had a right to hope for. At the same time, it was no less than Erza deserved and if Erza deserved it, he wouldn't stand on the way… somehow, experiencing his happiness by boosting her own made him feel less guilty about it. "I love you."

She smiled back and gave him a little kiss. "Good. That makes two of us. Now, come on," she said, grabbing him by the hand and turning around, pulling him along as she walked away. "Let's go tell the news to the guild. Just because Mirajane has twice as many news to give, it doesn't mean she gets to be the only one under the limelight. Baby Boy Fernandes deserves some attention as well." Jellal made some sort of hesitant sound at the mention of 'Baby Boy Fernandes' and stopped walking. Erza stopped too and turned around, frowning. "What?"

He gulped, looking nervous. "There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about," he said, looking down.

"What is it?"

He hesitated for a few moments. "I don't think our baby's last name should be Fernandes."

She gaped like a fish for what must've been five minutes. "…what?!"

"Let me explain," he requested. "It's not that I don't want to… recognize my son as mine or anything. Not at all! But…" Ha paused, taking a sigh. "All those years ago, I gave you the perfect name. Erza _Scarlet_. It fit you like a glove and it was always a name that brought so much hope… I don't want it to end with you. I don't want to take it away from you and replace it with another name that has very little history or positive meaning to me. Scarlet is the name I'd like our family to have… if that's okay with you."

She seemed surprised to say the least. And, at the same time, glad. Erza Scarlet was the identity he'd initially given her and she'd made her own. She hadn't realized how attached she'd been to the name until that moment when he'd said all of those things… and she couldn't possibly be more thankful for his gesture.

"Jellal Scarlet would sound incredibly odd," she observed. "You might want to just hyphenate it or add Scarlet somewhere in the middle once we get married while keeping on using only Fernandes to refer yourself on a regular basis, given that it's the name everybody knows you by. It's just logical."

He smiled. "I take it that's a yes."

"Well, it certainly is something to hold over Mirajane _Dreyar_'s head. She could only wish Laxus had been thoughtful enough to do the same for her."

"Actually, Dreyar is a rather notorious name, so she could actually be glad to ca…"

"Pipe down, Scarlet-Fernandes!" she barked. "I'm the mother of your child! You must always agree with me."

He chuckled. "Even when you're wrong?"

"I resent the implication that I am ever wrong," she declared before patting her belly. "Take note of that, Baby Boy Scarlet."

Jellal sighed. He should probably be more upset that it was so clear who wore the pants in that relationship. It occurred to him that he's just made it so much more obvious.

**Bonus – Around five months later: the competition continues**

"_Forty-three, forty-four…"_

"_Forty-one, forty-two… hey, I saw that last one, Mira! It doesn't count!"_

"_Says who?"_

"_Says me… I… whichever pronoun is appropriate in this instance!"_

"_You're saying that because you're two sit-ups behind!"_

"_Better two perfect sit-ups behind than two sloppy ones ahead!"_

"_Tell that to your muffin tops!"_

"_You're one to talk, thunder thighs!" _

Laxus groaned as he nursed a beer while witnessing the scene taking place by the guild's pool, featuring no other than Titania and the Demon bickering like brats. "Ugh… I thought this shit would be over once the hormones were gone. It was fun at first but now it's just getting old."

"I think this is their own way of encouraging each other to get back into shape," Jellal argued, also watching she scene as he sat at a table, using a foot to move the stroller where his five-week-old son slept, peacefully cocooned in several blankets, back and forth the way he liked it.

Laxus rolled his eyes. "I'm telling you, man: I could live a thousand years and on my death day I still wouldn't be able to understand the minds of women. And you know what the shittiest thing about that is?"

"Can't live without them," Jellal replied.

"A-fucking-men. Talk about a curse."

Jellal sighed. He wasn't sure about everybody else but, looking at his son and then at the woman he loved, who was busy racing Mira as they ran laps around the pool, he could think of worse fates to be cursed with.


End file.
